Photography. Luis Castañeda, Facebook profile.
Luis Castañeda, Canarian writer of La Palma, was the winner of the Amazon Storyteller Literary Award for authors in Spanish of 2020 with When the king comes. Has granted me this interview I thank you very much for your time and kindness. In it he tells us about that novel, other favorite books, writers and genres, his influences, customs and author hobbies and new projects he has in mind.
Interview with Luis Castañeda
His debut novel When the king comes was selected from more than 5.500 titles, from 50 different countries, self-published Through the Kindle Direct Publishing platform between May 1 and August 31, 2020. The work is based on the visit that King Alfonso XIII made to the island of La Palma in 1906.
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
LUIS CASTAÑEDA: I'm not sure they are the first stories I read and wrote, but they are the first that I am aware of. The first book as such was The land of furs, of July Verne, which captivated my pre-adolescent mind and which preceded several others by the great French writer.
As to first story that I remember writing would have to refer, already as a high school boy, to a irreverent narrative entitled Luisses on the planet of women, who intended to add some color and humor to the magazine photocopied that we strive to produce in the institute. It was not very successful.
- AL: What was the first book that struck you and why?
LC: I think I have established three milestones as a reader that refer to two books that made a deep impression on me for different reasons. The First of all, from my most combative time, was A man, by the Italian writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci, a crude, violent, passionate story, written in the second person, about the life of Alekos Panagoulis, a classic hero who tried on his own to end the so-called Dictatorship of the Colonels. He rose to international fame after his attempt to attack the dictator Georgios Papadopoulos, on August 13, 1968, his subsequent imprisonment and torture and, later, his death in circumstances still unclear.
El second The book I want to cite belongs to my nostalgic time, those years of loneliness and misery as a journalism student in a Madrid that surpassed me, surrounded by a thousand faces that came and went in their lives, alien to mine, unable to see «that little detail that I had painted in my painting », as happened to Juan Pablo Castel in The tunnelby Ernesto Saturday, until he found María Iribarne.
El third I already received the book in my maturity, with greater serenity of spirit, and which I recognize as the last link on a ladder of readings within the Latin American literary trend. Actually, I could almost have chosen any other title from García Márquezbut it filled me up completely Love in the Time of Cholera, of which, by the way, I have not yet finished reading it, because from time to time I return to it prompted by some doubt, some question, some wish.
- AL: Who is your favorite writer?
LC: This question, in these moments of my life, has an easy answer, because without a doubt I have to choose the Colombian Nobel Prize. Other writers that I could also point to here –Juan Rulf, faulkner, Carpentier, etc.– They always lead me, as a culmination, to García Márquez. Nor is it that I am a good reader, because I sin a lot of rereadings and I find it hard to open up to other styles. When I was younger, I did read a realist novel, especially the new American novel like Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Truman CloakAll from the journalistic world, but they didn't quite satisfy my dreaming spirit.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
LC: I had never thought about this, but I would tell you that I would have liked to create and live together with adventure characters, such as Phileas Fogg de Around the world in 80 days or traveler de The time Machine, by HG Wells, escaping the Morlocks, or Axel descending to Center of the Earth.
- AL: Any mania or habit when it comes to writing or reading?
LC: When I write I like to accompany me with music (instrumental, otherwise it deconcentrates me) and, at least for the whole year that I was writing When the king comes, a shot of medlar liquor drawn up by my mother. Then it is necessary to have the door closed, dispose of tiempo ahead (I cannot start writing knowing that in half an hour I will have to leave it to attend to some commitment) and, finally, a curiosity: I need to have short nails, well rent, that can touch the keys with the pads.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
LC: The when is something that I hardly choose, but rather obeys when he leaves me the rest of his life. I try to achieve stability, but as an autonomous that I am, it is often a chimera. Anyway, starting to write usually happens shortly after eight in the afternoon until approximately ten o'clock. Nor do I choose where, nor do I consider it. I have a small office, shared with my wife, where I have the computer, the books, the chess trophies, my other things… I just have to find a way to kick my wife out to achieve the longed-for loneliness.
- AL: What does your novel tell us When the king comes?
LC: This novel tells us about loneliness and hope, love and heartbreak, hatred and envy, of life and death; is a story of universal feelings concentrated in a tiny volcanic rock surrounded by the sea. When the king comes, which is subtitled love and death on an island adrift, is a historical fiction, or historical setting, which tells us the life and vicissitudes of the inhabitants of a forgotten island what are you waiting for, that they yearn for, the arrival of the king of the empire to rescue them, save them from all ills. And how, however, fate and their own actions end up turning that meeting, which was to be historic, not just the beginning of a new life, but the glorious culmination of the drama that haunts them.
With all the care in the world, they prepare the small town for the reception, even with all the miseries and needs they suffered, but, as if it were a curse, becoming is presenting obstacles that can ruin the desired encounter, like the one that happens on the first page: the appearance of the lifeless body, stabbed and floating in the bay, of the illustrious doctor Mauricio Santos Abreu.
From here on, a choral novel that reveals the characters involved and their relationships, and in which love - the forbidden, the upset and the ignored - plays a determining role.
- AL: Other genres that you like?
LC: My literary tastes, as a reader, they have been changing over the years. Lately my appreciation for biographies and, in general, by the historical novel. It is as if, on my birthday, I was captivated by the old stories and also the old movies.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
LC: Right now I am finishing the reading of a wonderful biography about the wright brothers, a historical essay-story Madrid, cut to Czech and, as a novel, I follow for a while with the reading of I have in me all the dreams of the world, a precious work of Jorge Díaz.
As for the writing is worse, since in these times I am not producing. I'm in the process to conform, to feel and to be moved by the history that struggles to take shape. I write down phrases, ideas, feelings. I need to stuff my chest and my mind with the voices of the characters before channeling the story. We'll see what comes out.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to keep something positive for future novels?
LC: Since the confinement, and throughout the past year, I have been applying a method to evade me reality that has served me as well as a psychological shield, and has been none other than focus on work. I started by catching up on overdue issues and then embarked on projects that I otherwise would not have had the time or momentum to undertake. I worked a lot, daily, during those months of hiatus or semi-stagnation in my company, where I live and where I carry out my work and life activity.
However i could barely write in that period. The uncertainty did not give me the required peace of mind for it. Funny, but that's how it was. Now, with the new year and after a few days of reflection, I am finding my way again. And, oh, surprise: paradoxically the road passes through work. It is the daily work that will give me the peace to create. I'm on it. I have hopes.